Karl Shapiro, “The Alphabet” The letters of the Jews as strict as flames Or little terrible flowers lean Stubbornly upwards through the perfect ages, Singing through solid stone the sacred names. The letters of the Jews are black and clean And lie in chain-line over Christian pages. The chosen letters bristle like barbed wire That…
Tag: language
Walking on Two Feet: The Evolution of Bipedalism
from Steven Mithen’s The Prehistory of the Mind: The evolution of bipedalism had begun by 3.5 million years ago. Evidence for this is found in the anatomy of A. afarensis, and, more dramatically, by the line of australopithecine footprints preserved at Laetoli in Tanzania. The most likely selective pressure causing the evolution of bipedalism was…
How Picking Fleas Led to the Evolution of Language
From Steven Mithen’s Prehistory of the Mind: The anthropologist Robin Dunbar looked at the size of the brain of H. habilis [2.1 – 1.5 million years ago] from a very different perspective. Recall that we have already referred to his work regarding the relationship between brain size and group size—living within a larger group requires more…
The Earliest Human Communities
From Steven Mithen’s The Prehistory of the Mind: There is good circumstantial evidence that H. habilis [2.1 to 1.5 million years ago] would have been living in larger groups than his ancestors. If we again look at modern primates, there appear to be two ecological situations in which primates choose to live in larger groups, and…
Humanity’s Earliest Rituals
Three passages on prehistoric religion from the book Becoming Human: One of the pervasive themes of [this book] is that spirituality and materiality cannot be separated. The roots of religion are to be found in ritual practice. And ritual practice, as documented by the material record goes back before the Franco-Cantabrian “explosion”, back indeed…
Did Neanderthals Have Language?
from Richard Klein and Blake Edgar’s The Dawn of Human Culture: The Neanderthals are fascinating because they were so much like us and yet so different. Before we abandon them completely, we want to address one well-known speculation for what could explain the difference. This is the possibility that they possessed only a limited…
The Great Myths #47: Sacred Language & the Limitation of Words (Taoism)
Two chapters from the Tao Te Ching, and each in three different translations, on the limitations of even the best words: Tao Te Ching #70 My sayings are very easy to recognize, and very easy to apply. But no one in the world can recognize them, and no one can apply them. Sayings have a…
The Great Myths #44: Sacred Language & Two Hymns to Speech (Hindu)
Rig Veda 10:71: The Origins of Sacred Speech Bṛhaspati! When they set in motion the first beginning of speech, giving names, their most pure and perfectly guarded secret was revealed through love. When the wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve, then friends recognized their…